


Originals

by itsdatrollmon



Series: Mon's Original Work [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Dark, Macabre, Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 15:52:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6085716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsdatrollmon/pseuds/itsdatrollmon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Original works.</p><p>1. The Beast - "I am Your Beast." A cynical moral tale.<br/>2. An Earnest Effort - a short macabre.<br/>3. Restart / Sunrise - indecisiveness made tragic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Beast

 

The bell clanged loudly throughout the atoll: _the Beast is here! Come, one, and come all!_

The villagers gathered around as the tiny dinghy drifted closer to shore, watching a single dot of light float through the fog. Eventually the brightness took shape, first casting its shine onto the glass encasing it, then to its bearer’s thin, wrinkled grip. Up went the yellow of the candlelight, up volumes of dark cloth, until it touched upon a bare, pointed chin.

The Beast drew his gaze upon his audience, the squint of his eyes deepening the shadows on his face, his distaste of the sight palpable through the low sag of his mouth.

The silence grew with the rise of his arms, the creep of the dark extending with the reach of his thin, knobbed fingers. The air quivered when he spoke, authority and terror all in one tone.

“Here I am,” he rumbled, languid and strong like a bear’s territorial growl. “I am your Beast. Mine is the power to slay any man of whose death is requested of me.”

He retrieved his paddle, and it rose in his grip; his boat rocked as he struck it on its side once, twice, thrice.

“This decade shall have three,” he said, at a length. “Three shall be worthy to approach, but only one request shall be heard. Who shall they be?”

As if awakening from a spell, the villagers began to murmur among themselves: w _ho shall they be, who indeed?_ They needled each other and pushed and persuaded, but none among them felt particularly worthy. Every ten years the Beast would arrive on his dinghy and ask them for their worthiest folk, for if he were given otherwise then his shadows would rise up and consume them whole. He would then sail away into the mist, to return the next decade for the same offering.

In the absence of willing tributes, the villagers’ anxiety rose, for never had there been a decade when anyone had been unwilling to claim the Beast’s offer. Their voices joined cacophonously until they dissolved to worried echos of _who shall dare? Who shall dare to be the three?_

“Here we are!” came a bellow, from the back of the crowd where the huts were beginning to thin. That mighty voice was carried by a mighty fellow, broad-shouldered and tall. Beside her stooped an old crone, his scraggly beard drooping morosely to the center of his chest. He was aided by a little boy, whose features were soft enough to give him a girlish air, and whose face glowed with self-assured bravery, volumes away from simple-minded arrogance.

The giant of a woman was not to be deterred; she strode forth boldly, hefting a large club over her shoulder. The crone crept along behind her, elbow in the firm hold of the youngest fellow. The villagers parted for them like the biblical Red Sea, clearing their path until they met with the impassive visage of the Beast.

“Welcome, three,” he croaked. His teeth gleamed like bronze in the dim light. “How shall we settle this? Shall I bear witness to a fight? Shall I be the judge for a contest?”

“No,” announced the warrior, and the solidity of her voice was like the sound of an axe upon wood, “we plan to work together.” She drew back her thick shoulders and lifted her chin, as if daring the Beast to oppose her whim.

Never in history has that happened, not in the half-century of the village’s existence – though the residents’ failure to place particular names to their faces revealed that the purported ‘chosen three’ were not native to the area. So it was perhaps with this foreign grasp of culture that the woman, the old man, and the little boy stood together without looking as if they were to strike the other down, all for a wish so precious that it had once reduced nobles to savages.

But the Beast simply sneered and, bending his head to acknowledge her decision, gestured for them to proceed. It was as if a great weight had lifted off the three, as well as their audience, for they had no real grasp of the temperament of the Beast. That this being of unknown otherworldly power may have only been gracious to them was a sobering thought.

It was in this solemnity that they began to consider their options.

“There is a dragon up in the northern mountains,” said the warrior, “and it has been terrorizing the nearby towns. The townsfolk are starving, and as are their children. Its flames have taken my sisters; it has laid waste to my clan; it has razed our homes and our heritage to the ground. We must act quickly to stop it.”

“That can be cared for by our King’s military,” answered the old man, “for all you need is a skilled army to remove a dragon. But what I have to propose is far more important: for the King is old, and his fool firstborn shall take the throne. Only should that child die will the younger heir take her rightful place without a violent revolution.”

“What a trouble this is,” exclaims the little boy, “for both are extremely important! I cannot, in good conscience, leave people to starve – yet neither can I let them suffer in the impulses of a vain princeling! I know – what if we simply wish away the greatest evil of all, such that we will be rid of the more pressing issue between the dragon and the princeling and end up with the lesser to deal with?”

The compromise was agreeable, for the warrior did not wish to harm an old man, nor did the old man desire to quarrel with the warrior. So she and he shook their allegiance, and together they turned to the Beast’s gaunt visage.

“Beast, we come forth with our wish,” said the little boy, brave and bold, “for it is to find our greatest evil, and to extinguish its presence forever! From there shall we achieve peace, and deal with the lesser matters ourselves.” His face shone with excitement, for here was a deed to change the course of history, so great that all of humanity shall quiver with the thought of what would have happened had this little boy not dared to present himself at the Beast’s maw.

The Beast remained silent for a moment, considering the child before him. The entire village held its breath in suspense, fearing for the boy’s life.

But from the Beast’s throat crawled out a rough chuckle, and he spoke, “for five decades I have heard many quests for vengeance, and seen to their completion. For five decades I have waited for this, little one, and I shall grant it.”

He reached out until his fingers touched the top of the boy’s head, spreading an unearthly chill down to the boy’s toes. The Beast smiled, crooked teeth bright in the edgeless black of his mouth, and his voice rumbled: “so it shall be.”

At that very moment the waters raged without wind, like tigers battling each other over prey; the clouds flashed with heavenly anger, as if Judgement Day had come; and from underneath the Beast’s boat leapt up massive shadows as vast as mountain ranges that embraced the dinghy like a colossal claw – and, encasing the boat like a seed, it shrunk down until the boy’s gooseflesh was the only reminder left of the Beast.

End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dynamics of violence.
> 
> The Beast = embodiment of tools for violence.  
> The Villagers = wish for violence without actually doing it themselves, for their own self-pleasure.  
> The Three = have a sense of justice, but misplaced in that their solution is ultimately violence.  
> The Beast's method of ending people = swallowing them in shadow. Ironically non-violent, because violence is borne of the human will, and The Beast is not human, so he sees no need for violent action in itself.
> 
> "I am Your Beast."  
> "...find our greatest evil."  
> The greatest evil is man's violence, and his freedom to do so without repercussion. Those are present in The Beast.  
> The Beast can't act on his own accord, because he is but a tool. Violence is a gun that must be fired by a human.  
> "Only the Worthy" is just a failsafe. Basically if you knew how to ask then you get the service, if you dont then the tool backfires on you. Like knowing how to properly use a gun.
> 
> The Beast touches the Boy's head = as a thanks.  
> The chill that The Beast leaves behind = just because he is incapable of being warm, lol.
> 
> The Beast's Dinghy / Water as a Mode of Transport = gentle waters can be rough.  
> The Beast as an humanoid = warped humanity.  
> So the Beast is actually a gentle character, in essence, except that his status as a tool for violence has warped him.
> 
> The Warrior = justice for family; selective loyalty  
> The Old Man = justice for government; self-righteousness  
> The Boy = justice for ideals; pride


	2. An Earnest Effort

_I suppose it hurts_ , he muses, while his pliers broke surface, _that Ms. Abigail hadn’t even accepted my flowers when she should have done at least that._

And indeed she should have, for they are still beautiful sitting in a glass vase on his kitchen counter.

He still remembers the terrified look upon Ms. Abigail’s visage when he had knelt on one knee; had drunken in the pretty flush of her face when she had whispered shocked obscenities in between his words. The dinner had gone on pretty well despite that, with hardly any of the other guests giving any special notice to the mismatched couple, and so nobody had noticed when tittering little Ms. Abigail had gone still, and had stayed quiet.

The event had gone swimmingly: Mr. Edgards had peered into his plate with approval befitting a magister, perusing the color of the meat and exclaiming over the exquisiteness of its texture. Mrs. Richards had credited it to the chevon-cutter, a butcher well-known in town for his skill with the blade, for perhaps he had cleaved such a wonderful specimen directly off the flank of a living, pasturing, kid.

Ernest had laughed; had entered the conversation by answering that he had chosen only the finest imported meats, but from which beasts he was not privy to mention, for they have long since begun running extinct and his acquisition of such specimens had merely been happenstance.

 _There may have been some cajoling involved_ , he had joked, to the enraptured gazes of the female guests, _but the creature had eventually walked into the_ _oven on its own._ That its former keeper had been sitting near the head of the table, cutlery buried into one of its finer cuts, was a story for another day.

Ms. Abigail had dry-heaved into her soup, making the bowl quiver. The guests had taken it as mirth, chatter dissolving into indulgent chuckles. Thinking similarly, Ernest had jumped the ship by offering her a hand; and at her shriek the table had burst into raucous laughter, though Ernest had belatedly realized that embarrassing his escort might not have been the right move at all.

Ms. Abigail had politely declined the offering, but rather than waste the dish, each guest soon had a segment of finger; the crispness of the bone had delighted them, so had the spice on the skin and the succulence of the flesh. The Grand Marquess of Winchester had been one of the better selections of the night.

It is only at the curve of the false rib that Ernest remembers to stop the saw. Sweat has beaded up his brow, and Ernest sweeps them off with a flick of a finger. The slope of muscle feels warm under his palms, and he pulls back gently until only thin strings of tendon stuck the fat to the bone. The tenderloin comes off with little resistance and plops soundly onto the flat tin pan, resonant like the steady chatter echoing from the dining room door.

That very door bursts open, and a frazzled Ms. Abigail bursts through the entryway. Her cheeks are no longer as red, though her eyes are as bright as the green which many ghouls envy. A distressed sound tears out of her throat when she sees Ernest in the middle of his cooking, arm-deep into the Duke of Northumberland’s bloated stomach.

“Oh hello, dear!” Ernest says amicably, though her composure worried him, “how are you faring?”

Ms. Abigail begins shaking like a leaf. Her lips move soundlessly, and Ernest relinquishes his hold on the Duke to lean an ear towards her.

“What was that, dearest?”

Her throat bobs nervously, and from her mouth comes a careful, “Ernest, you are a charming man,” but she holds her palm out and shows him the ring that had rendered her speechless for the better part of yesterday’s dinner; had made her stiff with what should have been, to Ernest, inexplicable joy.

“I simply cannot marry you,” she continues, “Not even for our friendship, which I still hold dear given its decade of existence, nor for your riches, which I confess may have caught my eye as well.”

He feels as if he had been doused in a bucket of iced water. His heart is decidedly attempting to wrench itself in two, a slice burning deep into his core. Ernest clutches at his chest, smearing ooze over his silk vest. “But, Abigail…”

Ms. Abigail relents a little at the sight, and she moves to clutch Ernest’s hands – but the ichor dripping off them seemed to deter her, so instead she grips at her brooch. “Oh, Ernest, it’s not you –“

“But it’s not you either!” Ernest says before she could finish, “You are perfect! _We_ are perfect, together! I gave you all I could, the finest of gatherings –“

“And they were indeed fine!” Ms. Abigail says, “the finest, the best. But we are simply too different,” she whispers apologetically, and drops the ring onto the counter. It clatters emptily like a common coin.

“You will be well someday,” she says, and tries to escape through the kitchen exit, except that Ernest wraps his hand around her wrist before she could.

“At least take the flowers,” he says, and he steers her toward the glass vase next to the Duke’s open skull. Her fingers are lax where he wraps them around the handles, and he thinks to envelop them in his palms until they regain strength, hoping that at least a fragment of his immense love seeps through their scant contact.

“I chose them for they reminded me of you,” Ernest says reverently, honest to the core. “I pray that you think of me when you look upon them.”

Ms. Abigail holds her palm to her lips, and for a moment she looks as if she is about to sob, but her gaze catches onto the Duke’s ravaged corpse and she rips the vase out of their joined grip.

“You shall taste happiness again someday, Ernest,” she promises, and her words weigh heavily on the flat of his tongue.

And so he did.

End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A story of unrequited love.  
> 


	3. Restart / Sunrise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unrequited is my favorite genre

While the rest of the world had been going crazy about Marian Rivera marrying a doorbell’s son, you had been seated at the front pew of a small chapel, trying not to look too smug as your friend recited her vows. It’s not like you could’ve helped it, really, especially when she’d been more married to her dogs than to romance. Except, eventually, she’d found a man who loved dogs more than she ever could.

  
At least you’re subtler than your other friends, who are shameless in their leering.

  
The wedding had gone off without a hitch – y’know, despite an easily distractible corgi –turned-ring-bearer and an uninvited stray cat but let’snotgointothat. Not a single drop of rain had attempted to crash the open-air reception, and it’s a perfect night – until you scrape your eyes over the landscape and. Ah.

  
“Fashionably late?” you greet, though the tinted window only reflects your smile. Your pristine white shoes are grass-stained now, having been trekked across the dewy garden. A faint shadow moves within the black sedan, and your hand lands audibly on the passenger door. There is a click.

  
It’s an invitation, so you open it.

  
“I’m only late if I’m attending.” Lena’s behind the steering wheel. Her hair is a caricature of the freshly woken, and her scruffiness has no right looking like the art that it is. Her eyes shift darkly as if she’s looking past your shoulder, towards the ongoing festivities – and they snap back to yours.

  
What you see shakes you a little.

  
“Let’s go,” she says simply.

  
You’re a groomsman. You should stay a little more; wish the couple a happy future. At least fetch your things.

  
“Okay.”

  
Ely Buendia begins crooning along the empty, New Year-emptied roads. The dashboard is blinking 2am and your family is probably asleep, because Noche Buena can’t last that long with grade schoolers conditioned to early bedtimes.

  
===

  
_“Brat,” Lena whispers so fiercely that it alarms you halfway to an apology, but her face is tilted away, and – it’s Queenie, the girl from the other class. You brace Lena’s shoulder with your palm. It won’t do for a bloodbath to happen in the middle of fifth grade._

  
_“Hey man,” you try, “what’s up?”_

  
_Lena says nothing, just glares at Queenie’s general direction. You eye how the other girl’s got Lena’s Quixote and is brandishing it around like a prize. It’s immature, but Mom’s always told you to never give bullies the satisfaction, so your arm loops around Lena like it’s meant to fit there and you drag her outside the classroom._

  
_“She’ll give it back,” because Queenie’s always only funny, and everyone knows she picks a lot on Lena because it’s Lena’s fault for being too easy to bait, “I’ll make sure.”_

  
_Lena fumes all the way down the hallway and back, but when you return for the next class the book sits accompanied by a note. You’re only slightly worried by Lena’s silence for the rest of the day._

  
_===_

  
Lena doesn’t drive for long, and the car stops beside a nameless stretch of land. It’s deathly quiet when the engine hums to a stop.

  
“Um,” is the first thing that comes out of her mouth. “Sorry. For – for all this. I mean, look how dressed up you are – and I just took you away and –“

  
She’s just as she always was, apologizing for some sort of imagined loss. It’s considerate, but in the way that it grates onto your nerves, because you chose her and why does she love thinking for everyone? “Any longer and I’d overshadow the groom,” you joke. “Lenny, you know I’d drop anything for you, right?”

  
Some of the tension leaves her shoulders, and she smiles thinly. Her fingers plow through her hair and clench on the steering wheel.

  
“How was the wedding?”

  
Puppies, food. Rings. What’s there to say? “It went pretty great, all dog-chasing considered.” The atmosphere tastes thick. Maybe you should be funny? “At least nobody tried to stop the wedding, haha!” Your laughter is weak, and so is the smile Lena gives you.

  
“…probably because I wasn’t there.”

  
What? That doesn’t make sense; but all you see is how Lena’s face is drawn, tired, and that there are deep bags underneath her eyes because she hadn’t bothered to put concealer on tonight. Your confusion makes her sigh.

  
“In the glove compartment,” she directs, “same as your wedding invite.”

  
It isn’t hard to find, because you’re a groomsman and you had helped design it. Those words scrawled on the margins, however, are not of your design.

  
Oh.

  
===

  
_“Hey.” It’s Queenie. Her grad gown is thrown over her shoulder, and she’s still wearing the cap even though rehearsals are over. You and Queenie have been friends for the better part of high school, though there’s not much you can say about her and Lena._

  
_“Hey Q,” you greet. She takes that as an invitation to sit. Her silence isn’t like the companionable ones you have with Lena, so eventually the itch in your head makes you glance at her._

  
_Her gaze is fixed to the stage, where Lena’s speaking with some professors. Lena’s voice rings out command after command, put-this-there-put-that-here-thank-you, and tomorrow’s setting begins to take shape. Queenie clears her throat._

  
_“She’s something, isn’t she,” and oh, that’s what this is about._

  
_“She could be yours,” you say, even as your insides become doused in frostbite._

  
_An ironic little smile tugs at Queenie’s lips. “Not likely,” and the lack of inflection in her voice makes her sound more miserable. She already tried once, long ago, with a book and a small note. “She always hated me.”_

  
_“If you say so,” you respond._

  
===

  
“If you could rewrite the past…” she drifts off. The starry night is adorned with a plume of smoke. You’re both lounging on the car roof, your jacket folded underneath her head even if she had mocked your chivalry. Lena traces shapes with the dying embers, and your heart twinges when you realize she is sketching out a name.

  
That’s a question you can’t answer honestly. “I’d have never asked Zara to prom,” you lie, and Lena’s laugh makes it taste sweet. “You?”

  
She shrugs. The cigarette meets her lips, and a new gray curl decorates the sky. “Would things have changed if I’d told her?”

  
“It would have been a lot more painless,” except for you, though that wouldn’t matter. Lena scoffs but she’s not making fun of you.

  
“And then what? We’d go buy a nice house with a white fence and live happily ever after?” her voice weighs heavily of exhaustion; of all the years she’s spent thinking about this. “Yeah. I would’ve let her keep her dogs, though my dad would’ve hated them, because I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t wanna visit anyway.”

  
Her eyes are bright when she turns to you, and it’s difficult to resist thumbing away her tears. You manage. “Think about it – if she and I’d gotten together, then she’d have had to deal with hiding this from her family, with lying constantly just for me. There’s a slim chance we could have been happy, but at a cost we could’ve lived without.” She hiccups, but her face is dry. “She’s changed. She’s happier now.”

  
Lena’s justifying her own cowardice, but in a way that you understand only too well, so you stay silent.

  
“Fighting for love is old-fashioned bull,” her conviction sounds like a choice made long ago. “Society has forcefully reinvented our idea of love, because love is no longer just about fighting for someone. _Love is in knowing if fighting for them will make them happy_.”

  
“You sound like a martyr,” you say, because you are the pot that calls the kettle black. The curve of her lips is a fragile thing that echoes how you’ve always felt. She shakes her head.

  
“People are only martyrs if they don’t regret anything.”

  
She sits up; the car rocks gently with the motion. You no longer lose balance, because with her, it’s like you never had it. Lena plucks the wedding invite from where it had since been crumpled in her pocket, all expensive cardstock torn in places it was never meant to.

  
_‘I loved you before’_ in pretty cursive glows in the haze of her lighter.

  
“I have an idea,” she smiles, “here’s a New Year offering. I’m starting over. I’ll resolve to be a completely new, regret-free person from now on...” the dimples on her cheeks are the little stars you can never reach, “…and maybe you can resolve to finally get a girlfriend,” she finishes jokingly, because her heart is something you can never keep.  
  


You should just play it off, you know. But somehow it’s easier for you to ignore the way your chest constricts when you already know the only way this can end. Your decision makes itself.

  
It’s time for you to start over too.

  
“Happy New Year,” you promise, and as you lean in the paper catches aflame. It glows like bright fireworks at midnight, even if it’s a sunrise that holds witness to your change, to your freedom.

  
_‘I loved you before but now I’m moving on’_ is the last to burn.


End file.
